Does The iPod Have A Patent Problem? (AAPL)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

Website Gizmodo is reporting that the Apple iPod’s ability to "automatically rotate from portrait to landscape mode depending on how you hold it" is a function that was patented by Sony Ericsson (SNE)(ERIC) in August 2006.

The iPod has certainly taken the thunder from Sony. The Walkman and Watchman successes are now long ago memories. And, the Sony Ericsson handset, which tend to be high-end and more expensive that most from Motorola (MOT) and Nokia (NOK) has to view the new iPhone as big competition.

Nice to have a patent on something the competition markets.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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